Akbar Ganji - Tag Search

Late last month, Gregg interviewed three Iranian opposition activists who told him of an emerging crack in the nascent Green Movement between the group's mainstream and those who had become more radicalized by the Iranian government's brutal crackdown. The movement had entered a crucial stage and needed a defined leadership and philosophy, they told him.

Robin Wright, a Washington Post reporter-turned-think tanker, believes the movement has remedied that problem, she writes in an op-ed today.

The release of an opposition "manifesto" - actually three statements from separate groups - signals the coalescence of the movement's philosophy, Wright says.

Friend of The Majlis and University of Denver Professor Nader Hashemi sent me an e-mail recently to let me know that a group of Iranian thinkers and politicians plan to conduct a hunger strike from July 22 to 24 in front of the United Nations building in New York City.

The purpose of the strike will be to show solidarity with Mir Hossein Mousavi's movement and protest the "electoral fraud" in Iran, according to the press release. You can view the release on Ganji's Web site, here. They ask anyone interested to join them.

Other strikers include: former parliamentarian Fatemeh Haqiqatjoo, womens rights activist Mehrangiz Kar, Iran's first ambassador to the U.N. Mansour Farhang and academic Majid Mohammadi.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Ganji (with Prof. Hashemi's translation help) when he visited Northwestern University in 2006, not long after he was released from prison in Iran, where he had conducted a weeks-long hunger strike. The man's not afraid of a few days without lunch, that's for sure.